


Lust Holds My Hand

by marcat



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Reflection, Self-Reflection, Song Lyrics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 10:15:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25349077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marcat/pseuds/marcat
Summary: He had no illusions about himself. He was capable of both love and hate, albeit stunted versions of both, and he was kind to the people he loved and cruel to the people he didn’t.But whoever else he was and whatever else he did, he was always honest about it. How many people could say the same?Based on "Lust" by the Raveonettes
Relationships: Lucy Gray Baird & Coriolanus Snow, Lucy Gray Baird/Corliolanus Snow
Comments: 3
Kudos: 24





	Lust Holds My Hand

_ I fell out of heaven _ _  
_ _ To I fell out of heaven _ _  
_ _ To be with you in hell _ _  
_ _ My sins not quite seven _ _  
_ _ Nothing much to tell _

He didn’t deal in hypotheticals.

Yes, it was dumb luck that he was born into a Capitol dynasty and not into the poverty and filth of the districts. But he was born into privilege. That was that.

Only district children participated in the Hunger Games, but many of his Capitol friends made the mistake of empathizing. What if it was one of them facing pain and death?

But it wasn’t. And it never would be. So why waste time thinking about it?

That was Sejanus Plinth’s chief mistake.  All the stupid things he ever did were driven by that question:  _ What if it was me? _ What if, what if, what if . . .

But it wasn’t him. He refused to unburden himself with the guilt of being rich and privileged. It wasn’t his doing - his father made all their money and orchestrated their move to the Capitol - and it was a good thing anyway. It would’ve been better if he were smart enough to realize that.

Coryo never even spoke to the idiot before the Games. Everything was fine before she came around. He never got in trouble. Never said an unkind thing out loud. He was smart and handsome but not remarkably so. Thoroughly average - that’s how others saw him. His lineage was the only notable thing about him, really. 

And then she showed up and ruined him, slaughtered that teenage boy that just wanted what was best for him and his family.

_ Lust I haven't craved _

_ A sainted boy I'm not _

_ I'll take it to my grave _

_ Beside it, cursed, I’ll rot _

His strongest feeling had always been fury. 

Fury at Sejanus Plinth for dragging him down. Fury at his cousin when she started turning herself into a living doll despite his direct order not to. Fury at Lucy Gray for having belonged to someone else, for debasing herself with that scumbag Covey boy. 

But at least he got to kill that boy. And then Lucy Gray really was all his. for a little while, at least.

Fury at his own mother for leaving him when he needed her most. He remembered the blood. Remembered the Grandma’am explaining what had happened while Tigris squeezed him in what was meant to be an embrace.

She should’ve tried harder to stay with him. It was selfish. He was a little boy and afraid to die and suffer and she wasn’t there to comfort him. She should’ve tried.

Lucy Gray Baird killed Coryo. Or maybe Coryo sacrificed himself, his life of luxury in the Capitol to be with the woman he thought he loved in a place he knew he hated.

And as it all fell down around him he was angry. At her. At himself.

He’d put himself in this position by giving in to something for the first time in his life, for not controlling himself. He fell prey to his baser nature. To greed. Lust. 

Capitol citizens were capable of restraint - that was the biggest thing that set them apart from the impulsive, brash district people who lived like animals in the dirt. Pigs in their own shit. Troglodytes. 

He imagined dying because of Lucy, either alone in the woods in a grave of insignificance, or at that tree with those God-awful birds screaming in his ears. That wasn’t just execution, it was torture.

And he’d die knowing that he’d done it all to himself and even if his life left him, that never would. His body would decompose into nothingness, his life would be forgotten, but there would always be that. 

And one day if they ever opened his grave - assuming he had a grave at all - they’d find nothing but bone fragments and a glittering mistake, a diamond in a sea of coal.

_ I ride these roads alone _

_ Beneath the sulfur sky _

_ Everywhere I roam _

_ Life is one big lie _

He had lots of friends and a little family but none of them really knew him. He never told them all the thoughts that ran through his head. They had no idea that all he ever felt was boredom. Love and anger, too, he supposed, but those feelings might as well be a drop in the ocean. Muted.

It was best to keep these things to himself. That way they could never be used against him, assuming those around him understood their significance.

Keeping secrets was not the same as lying - far from it. They were actually something of a preventative measure.

He didn’t mind the small talk and smiling too much, since he knew those things set the Capitol apart from the others. He didn’t consider that lying. It was etiquette, and etiquette was everything.

  
  


_ When the fireball goes down _

_ Out by LA waste _

_ I come into town _

_ But only for a day _

He had no illusions about himself or the world around him. 

He knew that he was capable of love - his mother, his daughter, his grandchildren - were all proof of that. Even Tigris for a time. 

He had one son and one daughter. But his son was weak like Sejanus was weak, and no amount of education or intervention could save him from himself, so he hoarded his love and gave it to his deserving daughter and her deserving children. 

He loved his daughter very much, and he loved her youngest child more than he’d ever loved anyone else.

What he felt for Lucy Gray Baird was not love. Lust, possessiveness. A mixture of shallow emotions. He just didn’t have the words for it at the time and  _ love _ seemed the closest definition.

He knew that he was cruel. Capable of mercy, certainly - he’d proven that by exempting Annie Cresta, a child in mind if not body, from the interrogation her fellow prisoners endured after their attempted escape from the arena. Leaving families alive despite his better judgment. Give many criminals a quick death - shot or hanged - rather than draw out their suffering.

_ Starving on my knees _

_ I pray for you to understand _

_ Man sure is weak _

_ But lust holds my hand _

He got older and people started to forget the war. They forgot that the Capitol once starved, too, that whole bloodlines were wiped out. 

The districts behaved monstrously. They didn’t understand that it was the Capitol who was and still is civilized. When the Capitol won the war, they didn’t prolong their victory celebration. Certain agitators were purged, a handful of structures lost, but that was all. They returned to the lives they led before and let others do the same.

And yet some people considered the Capitol's rule to be brutal.

Dr. Gaul once asked: “Is it better for a leader to be feared or loved?”

The other students debated it. He knew the answer right away. If your people love you, they will obey you. But they would also obey you if they feared you. But they’d resent you, too. Resentment was all right, though. Because love was restricting. If you wanted your people to continue loving you, you’d have to hold yourself back from doing what was right. 

Most people don’t know what’s good for them. Someone smarter has to show them. Enforce the rules. Keep them from descending into lawlessness. From regressing to animals. And sometimes they need to be reminded of what life would be like without that order. How much worse things could get.

_ I stumble and I cry _

_ I pounce with no avail _

_ At least I never lied _

_ Or did the truth derail _

He had no illusions about himself. He was capable of both love and hate, albeit stunted versions of them, and he was kind to the people he loved and cruel to the people he didn’t.

But he was never dishonest. Katniss Everdeen, Lucy Gray, Tigris, President Ravinstill. Everyone was a liar. It spread between them like an infection for which there was no cure. 

Furious, cruel, smart, ambitious, loving, resentful, honest, manipulative, generous. All words to describe him. And maybe some of them were opposites but that didn't mean they were contradictory. It was possible to be cruel to someone and love someone else (or at least pretend to). Cruelty and fury and manipulation weren't necessarily bad. Love and generosity weren't necessarily good - more often than not, they were a hinderance. Love was what kept the victors in shackles; love was the reason some people rose in the morning.

It all depended on perspective, said Dr. Gaul. And he agreed.

But honesty was valued by all people in all circumstances, and no one could dispute his honesty .  Whatever else he'd done, whoever else he'd been, at least he'd never lied.


End file.
